Baking Joy
The Sweet Rise of Flours Bakery
At Flours Bakery, Pastry Chef Jacquelynn Beckman sprinkles joy on her pastries, cookies, and breads. You can find the shop she co-owns with her husband, Jeremiah, just off King Avenue, nestled in a nondescript strip mall. Inside the bland industrial exterior, distinctive cakes, scones, muffins, cookies, pies, croissants, and ice cream wait to greet you.
The bakery, which opened in May of 2023, carries a sense of nostalgia and casual comfort —think silk flowers, dried wheat arrangements, and metal bistro tables — but once at the chest-high, curved glass case, the treats in the windowed box hold a flavor of sophistication, and beauty dusted with playfulness and lots of pretty.
Baking cakes and desserts, Jacquelynn says, “It was always a positive, a joy giver in my life.”
You sense that as you look at her cakes adorned with swirls of frosting and garnished with candied flowers. Shiny and colorful sugar dust enlivens cupcakes. Cream cheese frosting tops the cinnamon rolls and carrot cake muffins. Large French macarons blush with tints and flavors of raspberry or Belgian chocolate ganache. Loaves of focaccia deliver the tastes of Parmesan cheese and olive oil.
“I baked with my grandmother, my aunt, with the family. This was always a positive thing around the kitchen. For birthday parties, celebrations, we gathered around cake,” she says about her days growing up. She adds with a smile, “My mom was the worst baker ever. This spurred me on to bake. She made Rice Krispy treats and box cake.”
Jacquelynn received her training at Orange Coast College Culinary Arts and Baking/Pastry Program and was credentialed in 2008.
She originally enrolled in college full time to be on the track team. “I took baking classes in college. I then took more and more classes,” she says. After graduating from culinary school, she baked at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Nigel, and at the Fairmont Newport Beach. For two years she worked as a pastry sous chef with 24 Carrots Catering in Costa Mesa. From there, she moved to Caramel Valley Ranch in Monterey and then to the Heathman in Kirkland, just outside of Seattle. Before arriving in Billings, she worked for five years at the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas where she earned the recognition in the Dallas Tastemaker Awards for Best Pastry Chef in 2021.
It was about that time that the couple decided to move to a smaller town.
“My jobs always took me to big cities,” Jacquelynn says. “My husband and I are very ‘outdoorsy’. We’re really into nature.” They enjoy hikes with their golden retriever, Kiwi, and her husband has a love of hunting, fishing, and backpacking.
The couple relocated to Billings without having any connections here. “My husband went to Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah to check out the options.” In the end, the couple fell in love with Montana’s Trailhead.
After they arrived, the one-time home to Baby Cakes Bakeries came up for sale. Some equipment was left behind, but Jacquelynn invested in a sheeter for rolling dough into thin sheets, and an ice cream machine.
“I love the craftsmanship of making a croissant,” she says of the constant challenges. Changes in weather or slight inconsistencies in the ingredients can alter the outcome of the final product. “It is a love-hate relationship with making a croissant.” When it doesn’t come out right, she has to become a detective to figure out what went wrong.
Making a croissant takes three days. “We make our own butter blocks with high butter fat content. We make our dough from scratch. We shape it and then bake it,” she says. “People scoff at the price, but it’s a lot of labor that goes into creating a croissant.”
“She has spent years perfecting her croissants. They are the best in the state,” Jeremiah tells customers when he is behind the counter. Although he admits, “I am impressed with everything she makes. I know everything is top quality.”
Other challenges have included the rising costs of procuring their Belgian chocolate, as well as other ingredients.
“We get eggs from the Mennonites, who didn’t get hit with the bird flu, so we weren’t hit as hard when the (egg) prices rose. By buying local, we were saved from the price hikes and shortages,” Jacquelynn says, adding that they try to buy as much locally as they can. They get their produce from Swanky Roots, and she says, “Our Montana cherries are sourced through the (Yellowstone Valley) Food Hub, connecting us to small farms.”
Over the years, Jacquelynn says she’s been blessed to have worked with some really good chefs. However, she adds, “I have had to discover many things myself.”
She experienced growth around positive chefs who pushed her in her work. Those encouragements led her to become an executive chef at age 24. “Fake it until you make it,” she says. If she needed to learn how to temper chocolate, she watched YouTube or did the necessary homework to discover solutions.
Unfortunately, she also found that “a lot of professionals don’t openly tell you how to do things.” She shares an experience baking from a cookbook where she “followed the recipes to the T.” The final product, however, wasn’t acceptable. Jacquelynn believes some of the steps were purposely left out.
The errors only motivate her. She enjoys executing the needed precision in producing pastries, cakes, and cookies. Once she perfects orchestrating the ingredients and techniques, the fun comes when she puts her own personal spin on the creations.
Inspirations come from “what’s in season and what I can get my hands on.” Jacquelynn says her full-time employee, Jasper Wines, “asked if she could make blueberry rolls after seeing a shipment of gorgeous blueberries.” Jacquelynn didn’t discourage the enthusiasm.
Jasper has been working at Flours Bakery for about two months. She helped part-time over the holidays by taking on the role of head baker. Originally from Billings, Jasper worked in Phoenix for 10 years with her last job at Pa’La, a tapas, sandwich, and seafood restaurant with Mediterranean and South American flavors.
After coming back to Billings, Jasper worked as an animal control officer for the city of Billings for a spell. After meeting Jacquelynn, however, she gravitated to her background and high level of skill. “It’s hard to find someone that has a creative side that can run a business,” Jasper says, adding, “I am thoroughly humbled working with her.”
Jacquelynn’s husband, Jeremiah does all the sales for the bakery, but that’s not all he does. He’s often in the back of the house making large batches of bread, handling the accounting, or running deliveries. He also helps take care of their toddler. It’s why you’ll find a pop-up crib in the back office to keep their son safe when their hands are busy. With another child on the way, the couple knows they will have to continue being creative in balancing parenthood with running a bustling business.
“The kitchen is one of the roughest places for women to be,” Jeremiah says. “She’s always been very strong and kind to fellow employees.” He adds that Jacquelynn’s kindness carries to her being a mother. “She is a fantastic, loving mother that is very doting.”
While pastries are her specialty, Jacquelynn hopes to expand her sourdough bread program from the current production schedule of Fridays and Saturdays. The bakery is also expanding its reach by providing baked goods to both Maple Moose Coffee and Pop Shop as well as Rock Creek Coffee Roasters.
As her business grows in new and unexpected ways, you can be sure of one thing. Pastry Chef Jacquelynn Beckman will always bake joy into each and every one of her treats.
